Where Is the Record of Our Forgiven Sins?

Where Is the Record of Our Forgiven Sins?

For the record, I decided at the beginning of 2020 that I would blog four times a month throughout the year. This entry marks the conclusion of that commitment. I wrote six in one month bringing the total to 50.

Have you ever seen a cotton-picking sack? Ever used one?

I was a child and I never picked cotton all day every day for a week, but I spent the summers on my granddaddy’s farm and picked cotton a few days. The local schools in that part of Tennessee started early in the year so they could take a break for cotton picking. The kids did not go to school during picking season because everybody was needed in the fields.

Each person had their own sack and the kids’ sacks were no different from the grown ups’. It has a strap that goes over your shoulder leaving the opening at the top of the sack at about the middle of your chest. The sack is about eight feet long, so it drags behind you as you walk down the row.

You would choose a row and start picking. The cotton plant has some sharp parts that will scrape your hands. As you pick a boll, you put it in the sack. The sack is light when you start off – easy to drag behind you, but as the day goes on it gets heavier and heavier. You do not empty the sack until the end of the day when they weigh your sack. They pay the pickers by the pound of cotton they have picked during the day.

As it gets later in the day, you get more and more tired and the sack get heavier and heavier, now approaching one hundred pounds for adults. I never picked that much, but my sack was heavy for a kid. You’d take another step down the cotton row and drag the sack, Then you’d do it again; step, drag; step drag.

Some of us carry our forgiven sins with us like that. Everywhere we go we are dragging along that heavy sack of forgiven sins. Everyone we meet, every opportunity we encounter is done with that sack right there with us. We just cannot shake it. God does not intend for it to be that way. Psalm 103:10-12 says it like this:

¹⁰ He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.
¹¹ For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
¹² as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

When he says as far as the east is from the west, he is not talking about the East Side and the West Side of St. Paul. He is talking more about the Middle East and the West Coast U.S. Far enough that they cannot see each other or think about each other. He has removed them from us, picked up the cotton sack, emptied it into the trailer and hung it up. We do not have to pull it along anymore.

He also put it in another way. In Jeremiah 31:33-34 the Bible says;

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.
³⁴ No longer will they teach their neighbor,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

That does not mean He has amnesia or Alzheimer’s. God knows everything. It is more like we say on Sunday morning when we take the Lord’s Supper. Jesus asked us to remember Him, to be reminded of Him and His gift to us. God says he will not be reminded of our sins. He is not harboring them or keeping a list. He has emptied the cotton sack and hung it out of sight somewhere. His love for us is as high as the heavens are above the earth. If God does not remember our sins, we shouldn’t dwell on them either. They will just drag us down and get in the way of our mission here on this earth.